Richard Rohr….”Recently, I’ve found myself returning to one truth I’ve learned through a lifetime of ministry, contemplation, and shadow work: 

We cannot think our way into transformation. We must live ourselves into it — often weeping our way through it. 

Anger against the tragic absurdity of life is deserved and necessary, but if we do not transform our anger, we will transmit it. I’ve come to believe that tears hold the key to our deeper transformation. Tears are the sign of a soul beginning to surrender to love.  

I’ve seen this happen in so many lives: Women exhausted by holding the world together who finally give themselves permission to weep. Men on retreat who discover a profound sadness underneath their anger. Healers who let grief lead them to care instead of burnout. And in Daily Meditations readers like Kecia, who shared her story with us: “

I grew up in an authoritative, spiritually abusive household and spent my childhood terrified of God. By reading the Daily Meditations, CAC has brought Christianity back into my life. I saw the humanity of Jesus for the first time and the deep understanding that I’m not separate or alone. 

That’s the kind of transformation we hope to make space for each day through these Daily Meditations.  

Together, we are discovering the transforming wisdom of a divine love spacious enough to hold our tears. The Center for Action and Contemplation is funded by people like you who give freely and joyfully to support it. We are deeply grateful for each and every one of you.  

Twice per year, we pause and ask for your financial support. If the CAC’s work has been meaningful to you, including these Daily Meditations, please consider making a gift. Every gift, no matter the amount, helps this movement of love, justice, and inner freedom continue to grow.  

Please read the letter below from CAC’s Executive Director Michael Poffenberger about how you can support the conditions that make transformation possible. Tomorrow, the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the theme of “Sacramental Reality.” 

Thank you for taking this journey with us and for allowing us to be part of your life, your mornings, your tears, and your transformation. 

Peace and Every Good, 

__________________________________________________________

Sarah Young

Jesus Calling: November 11th, 2025

Jesus Calling: November 11th

Do not let any set of circumstances intimidate you. The more challenging your day, the more My Power I place at your disposal. You seem to think that I empower you equally each day, but this is not so. Your tendency upon awakening is to assess the difficulties ahead of you, measuring them against your average strength. This is an exercise in unreality.
     I know what each of your days will contain, and I empower you accordingly. The degree to which I strengthen you on a given day is based mainly on two variables: the difficulty of your circumstances, and your willingness to depend on Me for help. Try to view challenging days as opportunities to receive more of My Power than usual. Look to Me for all that you need, and watch to see what I will do. As your day, so shall your strength be.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Ephesians 1:18-20 (NIV)
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
Additional insight regarding Ephesians 1:19,20: The world fears the power of the atom, yet we belong to the God of the universe, who not only created that atomic power but also raised Jesus Christ from the dead. God’s incomparably great power is available to help you. Personal knowledge of Christ will change your life.

Additional insight regarding Ephesians 1:20-22: Having been raised from the dead, Christ is now the head of the church, the ultimate authority over the world. Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed one, the one Israel longed for, the one who would set their broken world right. As Christians, we can be confident that God has won the final victory and is in control of everything. We need not fear any dictator or nation or even death or Satan himself. The contract has been signed and sealed; we are waiting just a short while for delivery. Paul says, in Romans 8:37-39, that nothing can separate us from God and his love.

Psalm 105:4 (NLT)
4 Search for the Lord and for his strength;
    continually seek him.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 105:4-5: If God seems far away, persist in your search for him. God rewards those who sincerely look for him (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus promised “Every who seeks, finds” (Matthew 7:8). The writer suggested a valuable way to find God – become familiar with the way he has helped his people in the past. The Bible records the history of God’s people. In searching its pages we will discover a loving God who is waiting for us to find him.

Deuteronomy 33:25 (NIV)
25 The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze,
    and your strength will equal your days.

Father Richard Rohr reflects on creation as sacred and alive with God’s presence:  

Nature itself is the primary Bible. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” The world itself is the primary locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth. 

Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian and Doctor of the Church, put it this way: 

God brought things into being in order that God’s goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because God’s goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided. [1]  

If we scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 PM on December 31. That means our written Bible and the church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God would have had nothing to say until the last nanosecond. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation. “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is sacred! 

Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, including the cosmos, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. In fact, we have often dismissed it by calling it animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species, and even then we didn’t have enough love to go around for all of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest. 

Listen instead to the Book of Wisdom, as I translate it: 

How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist…. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5) 

All we have to do is walk outside and gaze at one leaf, long and lovingly, until we know, really know, that this leaf is a participation in the eternal being of God. It’s enough to create ecstasy! Our relationship to reality allows us to meet things center to center or subject to subject, inner dignity to inner dignity. For a true contemplative, a gratuitously falling green leaf will awaken awe and wonder just as much as a golden tabernacle in a cathedral.  

Recognizing Grace

Contemplative author and artist Christine Valters Paintner expands how we understand sacramentality—not only as something we experience in church rituals, but also a way of perceiving the divine presence in all things:  

One of the classic definitions of a sacrament is something that is an outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible grace. In the Christian church there are different rituals that are considered to be sacraments. The Catholic Church has seven sacraments, while other denominations count fewer among their number. However, this idea of sacramentality extends beyond the formal sacraments such as Baptism, Matrimony, Communion, and the Anointing of the Sick. This sense of sacramentality, rooted in the Incarnation, extends our vision out to the world so that everything can be a sacrament, meaning every person, creature, plant, and object can be an opportunity to encounter something of the Divine Presence in the world. Sacramentality is a quality present in creation that opens us up to the Sacred Presence in all things. Sacraments reveal grace.  

When viewed through this expansive lens, we discover that the more we cultivate intimacy with the natural world, the more we discover about God’s presence. All of our interactions with nature can be sacramental, and all the ways nature extends herself to us are sacramental as well. Sacramentality breaks through our surface obsessions in the world and plunges us into the depth of the Sacred at every turn. It is a spontaneous reminder of God’s creative upwelling and expansive love, calling us to love beyond boundaries. St. Isaac the Syrian defines a charitable heart as one “which is burning with love for the whole creation, for [humans], for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons—for all creatures.” [1]  (demons?)djr

 A shift takes place when we see life in this way:  

This discovery that every creature and every created thing can be a window of revelation into the divine nature is an invitation to fall more and more in love with the world. To see that teachers of grace exist everywhere means to bring a sense of reverence to the way we walk in the world. When we encounter nature as sacrament, we can no longer objectify it. We can instead create the circumstances that nurture and nourish this kind of vision…. Sacramental vision means not only that we grow in our love of God’s ways in the world but also that we grow in our sense of kinship with creation….  

There is a sense of God’s incarnate presence in creation that shimmers forth to reveal the holiness of all things. Notice how your senses come alive when you walk out in the world aware of its sacramental nature. What do your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin each reveal to you about how God is alive in the world around you?  

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NOV 10, 2025. Skye Jethani Don’t Worship Like a Pagan

Almost every ancient creation myth says that humans were created to serve the gods. We were needed to build the gods’ temples, to provide food to the gods through our sacrifices, and to appease the gods’ anger with our prayers and worship. Pagan mythologies said our purpose was to be the gods’ slaves.This pagan vision of life and worship is turned upside down by what God reveals about himself in the Hebrew Scriptures. Unlike the gods of Babylon, Egypt, or Rome, the God of Israel did not need to be fed, clothed, or housed by people. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,” he said, “for the world and its fullness are mine” (Psalm 50:12). And the Bible is clear that God does not live in a temple built by people, but has made the whole universe his dwelling place (Isaiah 66:1). In other words, Israel’s God did not need us. He does not need your service, offerings, praise, prayers, or your Sunday morning. So if God did not create us to serve him, and if there is nothing we can properly offer to him, what is the point of our worship? Within this question, we discover the problem. Because of our consumer mindset, we assume that worship must have a concrete outcome; some practical purpose that measurably benefits either us or God. In this formulation—which is the hallmark of paganism—worship is a means to an end; it is a transaction in which we offer to the deity what he needs (praise, prayers, sacrifices) and in response, we expect to receive what we need (blessing, protection, wealth, etc.). Here’s a simple, but useful, example. Back in 2010, Steve Johnson was a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. In an overtime playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Bills lost when Johnson dropped a pass in the end zone. After the game, Johnson tweeted: “I praise you 24/7!!! And this is how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How??? I’ll never forget this!! Ever!!” Johnson had a transactional understanding of worship. He offered God his praise 24/7, and in exchange, he expected divine help catching footballs. Steve Johnson had kept his end of the deal but felt God had failed to uphold his. This is not Christianity. It is paganism. And it is not biblical worship. It’s an attempt to control God with offerings and incantations.Properly understood, Christian worship is never transactional. God may delight in our praises, but he does not need them. And in worship, we may experience grace and illumination—but these are not guaranteed. Rather than seeing worship of God as a means to an end, Christian faith understands God to be an end in himself. As David declares: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” We gather to worship for no more practical reason than to adore our Creator and Redeemer, and in the process, we discover something equally impractical—he adores us as well. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 27:1-4 PSALM 50:7-15 WEEKLY PRAYER From Desiderius Erasmus (1467 – 1536) Lord Jesus Christ, you said that you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Help us not to stray from you, for you are the Way; Nor to distrust you, for you are the Truth; Nor to rest on any other than you, as you are the Life. You have taught us what to believe, what to do, what to hope, and where to take our rest. Give us grace to follow you, the Way, to learn from you, the Truth, and live in you, the Life. Amen.

Set Yourself on the Right Way

Friday, November 7, 2025

Elias Chacour is a Palestinian Arab-Israeli and a former archbishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic church in Palestine. At one point in his ministry, Chacour went against the orders of local authorities to build a secondary school to educate the youth in his community in Galilee. He drew on his understanding of the Beatitudes to strengthen him in overcoming many challenges to its completion:  

Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus, has greatly enriched my understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Because the Bible as we know it is a translation of a translation, we sometimes get a wrong impression. For example, we are accustomed to hearing the Beatitudes expressed passively: 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied. 

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 

“Blessed” is the translation of the word makarioi, used in the Greek New Testament. However, when I look further back to Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray, from the verb yashar. Ashray does not have this passive quality to it at all. Instead, it means “to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous.”  

How could I go to a persecuted young man in a Palestinian refugee camp, for instance, and say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” or “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”? That man would revile me, saying neither I nor my God understood his plight, and he would be right. 

When I understand Jesus’ words in Aramaic, I translate like this: 

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied. 

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God. 

To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately. I can hear him saying, “Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless.” Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair…. 

“Get up, go ahead, do something, move,” Jesus said to his disciples.  

Ultimately, the secondary school was completed and allowed to stand, despite the lack of official permits for water and electricity.  

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5 on Friday John Chaffee

1.

“Food is not evil, but gluttony is. Childbearing is not evil, but fornication is. Money is not evil, but avarice is. Glory is not evil, but vainglory is. Indeed, there is no evil in existing things, but only in their misuse.”

– Maximus the Confessor, 7th Century Monk and Theologian

One thing I enjoy about the early patristics and monastics is that they actually had a relatively well-developed understanding of good and evil.

For many of them, the distinction that matters most is how a thing is used.  We are prone to think that things are evil in themselves, but God looked at the whole creation and called it “Tov Me’od/Strongly Good.”  What is potentially evil is how we use the things God has called “Strongly Good.”

The actual difficulty arises when we start avoiding things that can be used for the wrong reasons.  Things such as money, alcohol, sex, food, etc., are then avoided because they might tempt us.  What really needs to happen is for us to re-examine the attachments we have to such things.

2.

“When a system is not dominated by anxiety, everyone is free to speak truthfully, everyone is free to listen curiously.”

– Chuck DeGroat, Author and Therapist

Unhealthy, reactive, and anxiety-driven families or workplaces do not allow people the freedom to speak their mind.  In such systems, there is no such thing as a “feedback loop” in which the system has channels for people to share their experiences.

It is not uncommon for me to hear that a church system does not have annual reviews or exit interviews for its staff or for congregants who leave for another church.  Sometimes the fear of conflict leads us to cut off even the chance for a disagreement, even if it could lead to healthy learning and then healthy course correcting.

For a system to be healthy, its members need to grow in their own health, their own non-reactivity, and their own non-anxious presence.  Once there are enough of that type of maturity, a tipping point can be reached, and the larger family, community, or workplace can adopt that same level of health.

3.

“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

– Brene Brown, Researcher & Sociologist

In an effort to avoid being sad…

We also numb our ability to experience joy.

We cannot have the light without the darkness.

The goal is not to excise or cut out all the darker, heavier emotions.  The goal is actually to feel them appropriately.  To avoid them is to only delay their eventual explosion or “seeping out” when we do not want them to make themselves known.

I am a couple of years into this task of learning to integrate all the emotions.  I used to be dominated entirely by existing on the intellectual level.  It was as a result of some severe pain that I learned the secondhand destruction that can come from not integrating my own emotions without judging myself.

As a reminder, I repeat three words to myself…

“Integrate, integrate, integrate.”

Or, in other words…

“Make-whole, make-whole, make-whole.”

Or, in other words…

“Holy, holy, holy.”

4.

“It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.”

– Catherine of Siena, Italian Mystic

This is also known as the via negativa.

We want to know God by the via positiva, through the good things, the pleasant things, the enjoyable or easy things.

There is a strange paradox: we are most aware of God’s presence because of the experience of God’s absence.  Likewise, we are most aware of our need for love because of the lack of love we experience from those we might most expect it from.

Years ago, I took some high school guys out for wings.  These three chaps did not come to my youth group or Sunday school with any regularity, and yet we sat and talked about God and faith for close to 3.5 hours.

During that time, I said, “You know, I only came around to appreciating and wanting the holy life because I got tired and frustrated enough of the opposite that I began wanting the holy life for myself, and not because others wanted it for me.”

Again, as Catherine would say, “It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.”

5.

“Anything touched by the light becomes a light itself.”

– Ephesians 5:13

The best way to deal with the dark is not to avoid it, but to shine an exposing, illuminating, cleansing light on it.

And, in so doing, that which was previously dark becomes something that passes that same light forward. 

The Healer Teaches

Thursday, November 6, 2025

Perhaps all the world needs is enough of us to risk believing and putting the beatitudes into practice.
—Megan McKenna, Blessings and Woes 

Theologian Megan McKenna focuses on the way Luke’s Gospel presents Jesus and the Beatitudes, known as the “blessings and woes.” 

[In Matthew’s Gospel], Jesus, the new Moses, is the law-giver who goes up the mountain with his disciples around him, while the crowd remains. In Matthew Jesus teaches them from the mountain. In Luke [6:17–35], Jesus … comes down with [the disciples] to a level place that is crowded with hordes of people from all parts of the region and beyond to the coastal cities: believers, unbelievers, outsiders, and probably many not welcome in religious society.  

Before he teaches, he heals; or perhaps as he heals, he teaches. Those who have come to him are ill, diseased, troubled by evil spirits, despised by society. They are desperate, seeking to touch him…. The scene is one of motion, reaching, grabbing, and we are told simply that “the power which went out from him healed them all.” This power, his spirit and presence, is healing, comforting, soothing, calming, promising. But the most startling line of all is the last one: “Then lifting up his eyes to his disciples, Jesus said….”  

He lifts up his eyes: he is positioned below them, probably kneeling on the ground, tending to those in pain and suffering, attentive to the needs of those reaching for him…. He is in a position of vulnerability, of solidarity with the masses of people in need. From this position he speaks the beatitudes: the blessings and the woes…. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is more comfort-giver than teacher; more attentive than discursive; more tender than instructive; more embracing of the pain of others than distant as law-giver.  

The blessings and woes are taught from this place of vulnerable solidarity and are meant to be put into practice. 

These few lines of blessings and woes are followed by a staggering sermon that is … seemingly impossible to put into practice. There are exhortations to love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you and malign you, to turn the other cheek and go an extra mile…. 

It seems that the blessings and woes and what follows from them in practical action form the foundation of the kingdom of God in the world…. The words of Jesus empower and sustain those called to be responsible for the new public order and common good, the defense of the poor, the care of the despised and diseased…. When the words of Jesus are put into practice the kingdom comes.  

Thich Nhat Hanh has said: “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now…. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.” [1] We need to practice reading and hearing the beatitudes; we need to put them into practice.  

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Jesus Calling: November 6th, 2025

Jesus Calling: November 6th

Seek to please Me above all else. As you journey through today, there will be many choice-points along your way. Most of the day’s decisions will be small ones you have to make quickly. You need some rule of thumb to help you make good choices. Many people’s decisions are a combination of their habitual responses and their desire to please themselves or others. This is not My way for you. Strive to please Me in everything, not just in major decisions. This is possible only to the extent that you are living in close communion with Me. When My Presence is your deepest delight, you know almost instinctively what will please Me. A quick glance at Me is all you need to make the right choice. Delight yourself in Me more and more; seek My pleasure in all you do.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
John 8:29 (NIV)
29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”

Hebrews 11:5-6 (NIV)
5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
4 Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Not for the Proud

In 1942, Clarence Jordan established Koinonia Farm in Georgia as a pacifist, interracial “demonstration plot” for the kingdom of God. Jordan understood the gospel as something Christians must consciously choose to live out. 

The kingdom of God on earth is Jesus’ specific proposal to humanity. While the Sermon on the Mount is not a complete statement of the proposal (it takes all four Gospels for that), it does contain many of the major points. So it is quite natural at the very beginning for Jesus to deal with the question of how to enter the kingdom, or how to become a citizen of it.  

The first seven Beatitudes [Matthew 5:3–9] do just that. They are steps into the kingdom, the stairway to spiritual life…. These are not blessings pronounced upon different kinds of people—the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, and so on. Rather, they are stages in the experience of only one class of people—those who are entering the kingdom and who at each stage are blessed. The kingdom, of course, is the blessing, and each step into it partakes of its blessedness. This blessedness comes with the taking of the step, and is not postponed as a future reward. Jesus said, “Blessed are…”.  

The first step in becoming a son or daughter, or being begotten from above, or in entering the kingdom, or being saved, or finding eternal life—whatever term you wish to use—is stated by Jesus as:  

“The poor in spirit are partakers of the divine blessing, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” [Jordan’s translation]. 

What does Jesus mean by “poor in spirit”? In Luke’s account it is simply “you poor.” What kind of poverty is he talking about? If you have a lot of money, you’ll probably say spiritual poverty. If you have little or no money, you’ll probably say physical poverty. The rich will thank God for Matthew; the poor will thank God for Luke. Both will say, “He blessed me!” Well, then, who really did get the blessing? 

Chances are, neither one. For it is exactly this attitude of self-praise and self-justification and self-satisfaction that robs people of a sense of great need for the kingdom and its blessings. When one says, “I don’t need to be poor in things; I’m poor in spirit,” and another says, “I don’t need to be poor in spirit, I’m poor in things,” both are justifying themselves as they are, and are saying in unison, “I don’t need.” With that cry on their lips, no one can repent…. 

It is neither wealth nor poverty that keeps people out of the kingdom—it is pride.  

So the poor in spirit are not the proud in spirit. They know that in themselves—in all people—there are few, if any, spiritual resources. They must have help from above. They desperately need the kingdom of heaven. And feeling their great need for the kingdom, they get it.  

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NOV 5, 2025 No Rest for the Weary. Skye Jethani

Christ has called pastors to care for his sheep. That’s what the word pastor means—a pastor is a shepherd. The metaphor certainly includes feeding, leading, and protecting the flock of Christ, but we often overlook the shepherd’s role in providing rest. “He makes me lie down in green pastures… He restores my soul,” David said of his Shepherd in Psalm 23. Looking back on my years as a pastor, I will confess that providing rest for God’s people never registered as part of my calling. Instead, I thought my job was to extract more labor from them. Often, I functioned more like a plowman, yoking and driving oxen to accomplish my work, rather than a shepherd creating space for God’s people to rest from theirs. After leaving my full-time pastoral role in 2008, I discovered what life was really like among the sheep. I began keeping track of my time in a journal. What I found surprised me. Between my work, my family, and the responsibility to maintain a home and a body, I estimated about 12 percent of my time was flexible. With this 12 percent, I could read a book, volunteer at the homeless shelter, or take a nap. This 12 percent was also targeted by my church.It was often indirect and subtle, but from the moment I entered the church building on Sunday morning, I felt like my 12 percent needed constant protection. Whether it was the children’s ministry seeking volunteers, or the upcoming missionary dinner, or the new property committee—everyone wanted my time and energy. Between the songs and Scripture, the morning was crammed with ads. Sometimes they were even cleverly embedded in the sermon itself. In the contemporary ministry world, R&R doesn’t mean “rest and relaxation,” but “recruit and replace.” There is a never-ending need for new church volunteers to replace those who’ve burned out. I was now seeing—and feeling—the unsustainability of the system from the other side.Ultimately, it was my responsibility to say yes or no to these service opportunities, and I can’t fault the church leaders for making me aware of the important work happening in our community. After all, I preached for many years, pushing the very same activities with the very same good intentions, but after a few months in the pews rather than the pulpit, I felt exhausted. After a challenging week at work, there were some Sundays when attending a worship service brought more stress than sabbath into my life.I wonder if our culture’s addiction to work, including within the church, is contributing to the church dropout rates. Based on conversations I’ve had with former church attenders, I think it is. Of course, the work we’re calling people to in the church is good, godly, and important, but when neither the culture nor the church models a redemptive pattern of work and rest anymore, eventually the sheep will leave to find a pasture where they can lie down—even if it’s in front of a television on Sunday morning.  WEEKLY PRAYER. From Richard of Chichester (1198 – 1253) Thanks be to you, my Lord Jesus Christ, For all the benefits you have won for me. For all the pains and insults you have borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, May I know you more clearly, Love you more dearly, And follow you more nearly, Day by day. Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Blessed?

Heaven begins now, for any saints willing to sign up. 
—Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest 

Spiritual writer Barbara Brown Taylor considers the promise of “blessing” that is central to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:  

We don’t have to wonder what a blessed life looks like. Jesus laid that out right at the beginning of his most famous sermon, though his description is so far from what some of us had hoped that we would rather discuss the teaching than act on it…. In this life, most of us pedal pretty hard to avoid going in the direction of Jesus’ Beatitudes. We read books that promise to enrich our spirits. We find all kinds of ways to sedate our mournfulness.  

According to Jesus, the blessings of the kingdom are available here and now—and later: 

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth are not “Blessed shall be” but “Blessed are.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—not because of something that will happen to them later but because of what their poverty opens up in them right now. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”—not because God is going to fill them up later but because their appetites are so fine-tuned right now….  

When people who can’t stop crying hear Jesus call them blessed right in the basement of their grief, they realize this isn’t something they are supposed to get over soon. This is what it looks like to have a blessed and broken heart….  

When people who are getting beat up for doing the right thing hear Jesus call them blessed while the blows are still coming, they are freed to feel the pain in a different way. The bruises won’t hurt any less, but the new meaning in them can make them easier to bear. Who knows? They may even change the hearts of those landing the blows, while they bring the black-and-blue into communion with each other like almost nothing else can.  

This is what the Beatitudes have to do with real life. They describe a view of reality in which the least likely candidates are revealed to be extremely fortunate in the divine economy of things, not only later but right now. They are Jesus’ truth claims for all time, the basis of everything that follows, which everyone who hears them is free to accept, reject, or neglect. Whatever you believe about him, believe this about you: the things that seem to be going most wrong for you may in fact be the things that are going most right. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fix them. It just means they may need blessing as much as they need fixing, since the blessing is already right there.  

If you can breathe into it—well, that’s when heaven comes to earth, because earth is where heaven starts, for all who are willing to live into it right now.   

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Everything in Its Right Place

Creation and the book of Job

Mark Longhurst

Everything fits together perfectly. Job’s world makes sense. He fears God, shuns evil, and is blameless and upright. He even sacrifices after feast days for his children, just in case any of them happen to sin. What a guy! As a reflection of Job’s life, the natural world fits together perfectly as well—at least the portions of it within Job’s control.

Domesticated animals live fruitful lives under Job’s watch. In his house, 7,000 sheep graze, 3,000 camels roam, and 500 yoke of oxen work the fields. Job is a good and righteous man. He’s a wise choice for a church moderator, a town selectman, or a local non-profit board member. The chaos of creation has not yet hit him; the shattering power of storms and disasters and crushing loss have held themselves at bay. Everything in Job’s world, as Thom Yorke from Radiohead sings, is in its right place.

The Protective Fence Falls

But we know the story. The Adversary, Satan, presents himself before God in the heavenly court as a “prosecuting attorney.” Satan makes the accusation that Job’s fear of God depends on God’s protection. “You have fenced him in,” the Satan points out to God, “but if you take away all that he has, Job will surely blaspheme you to your face.” And so God grants the adversary-accuser permission to turn Job’s life over to forces of chaos. God removes the protective fence around Job, and his household begins to disintegrate.

Fire falls from heaven; it burns Job’s sheep and his servants. Bandits raid the camels and put Job’s other men to the sword. A mighty wind disrupts a family feast, causing a building to collapse on the remaining family; a severe inflammation spreads through Job’s entire body. His friends later will strive hard to explain away Job’s plight, but when they first witness Job’s suffering, they can only sit in silence and weep.

Instead of ‘Let there be light,’ Job declares, ‘Let there be darkness.’”

Job’s despair and anger eventually overcome his pious reputation. He curses the day he was born. But what’s more is that he curses creation itself. He sings a lament in chapter 3, full of depression and self-absorption, identifying his own life’s collapse with the undoing and destruction of God’s very good creation.

Instead of “Let there be light,” Job declares, “Let there be darkness!” (Job 3:4). Instead of two great lights separating night and day, Job curses stars to fall. Instead of sea monsters swimming and creatures creeping and wild birds flying, Job calls for Leviathan—the primordial monster—to be captured and put down. And instead of Sabbath rest on the seventh day, Job only has eyes for the repose of the grave.

God’s protective fence around Job’s life has become a suffocating prison.

Our hearts go out to Job, and we only have silence and tears to offer when the lives of people we love fall apart. We dare not attempt, like Job’s friends in the rest of the book, the false comfort of religious answers. The first lesson they teach budding ministers in hospital chaplaincy is simply to shut up and listen.

And yet Job’s wisdom folktale asks more than the perennial question of innocent suffering. Sermons will continue to be preached about the unanswerable groan, “Why, God?” But, in a time of environmental catastrophe, when, as Bill McKibben puts it, we are running Genesis backwards, this Hebrew tale also tells of the universe and the human’s place within it

“In a time of environmental catastrophe, when we are running Genesis backwards, Job tells us of the universe and the human’s place within it.”

Job’s happy days, it turns out, glided along on the dangerous belief that nature’s role is to serve, to be domesticated for human purpose. The only non-human living beings identified in Job chapter 1 are the sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys that toil on Job’s land. Just as Job is fenced in, protected, and blessed, the wild and unkempt aspects of creation are fenced out and ignored.

In a consumerist economy such as ours, Job’s and our ignorant bliss is sustained at the expense of the unseen earth and its living creatures. If nature only exists to enhance the temporary stability of our lives, nature becomes merely an extension of our own ego’s consciousness. It becomes permissible, then, to scour the globe for oil, remove environmental protections, and rollback use of renewable energies.

To be honest, Job’s narcissism didn’t diminish once his life fell apart. In Job’s lamentation he still places himself as the center around which creation revolves. Job certainly could not have envisioned the era of the Anthropocene—and yet even today, it is perhaps the height of arrogant anthropomorphism to think that the universe will cease breathing simply because we will.

God in the Whirlwind

Yet 35 chapters, two soliloquies, and three cycles of rambling dialogue later, God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. God’s voice thunders through creation itself to tell another creation story through pointed rhetorical questions: “Where were you when I laid earth’s foundations? Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together?” In modern language: Where were you at the Big Bang? Where was Western Civilization during the Ice Age? It’s God who birthed gushing waters and swaddled them in clouds, God who assigned dawn its place, God who peered into the gates of deep darkness and death—not Job, not us.

Behind the terror of Job’s plight and the tempest containing God’s voice lies a humbler view of humanity’s place on earth. Multiple Bible passages such as Genesis 1 picture humanity as the “crown” of creation, the rulers or stewards of earth, the mini-kings and queens in God’s image, watching over earth’s realm with either benevolence or terror. And yet after several thousand years of empire-building, resource procuring, world creating, and earth destroying, God’s whirlwind speech downsizes us to a smaller cosmic role.

We consistently confuse our place with God’s place, but humanity in Job’s book is not the crown of creation. Rather, we are simply one part of creation’s expansive, wild, diverse community.

Father Richard Rohr writes about the radical message of the Sermon on the Mount.  

In his teachings, and in the Sermon on the Mount in particular, Jesus critiques and reorders the values of his culture from the bottom up. He “betrays” the prevailing institutions of family, religion, power, and resource control by his loyalty to another world vision, which he calls the reign of God. Such loyalty costs him general popularity, the support of the authorities, immense inner agony, and finally his own life. By putting the picture in the largest possible frame, he calls into question all smaller frames and invites his hearers into a radical transformation of consciousness. Many were not ready for it—nor are many of us today. 

To understand the Sermon on the Mount, we need to clarify where Jesus is leading us.  

It’s not to the old self on the old path, which would be non-conversion and non-enlightenment.  

It’s not to the old self on a new path, which is where most religion begins and ends. It involves new behavior, new language, and practices that are sincere, but the underlying myth/worldview/motivation and goals are never really changed. My anger, fear, and ego are merely transferred to now defend my idea of God or religion.  

Jesus is leading us to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness, worldview, motivation, goals, and rewards that characterize one who loves and is loved by God.  

Matthew sets the stage for the Sermon with three simple sentences: “Seeing the crowds, he went onto the mountain. And when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak” (Matthew 5:1–2). Remember, Moses came down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments. For Matthew’s Jewish audience, the message is clear: This is the new Moses going back to the mountaintop, reproclaiming the truth, bringing down the new law. That is a very important context: In a certain sense, the Sermon is Jesus’ revisioning of the Ten Commandments.  

The Beatitudes (sometimes translated as “happy attitudes,” or even congratulations in a secular sense) are addressed not to the crowds but to Jesus’ disciples. Later in the Gospel, the most demanding teaching— “take up your cross”—is reserved for an even smaller group, the twelve apostles. The Sermon is addressed to the larger second circle of disciples, those who are still being initiated. That’s us!  

It seems there is a very real plan in Jesus’ initiation. He is aware of timing, readiness, and maturation. At the early stages, we are not ready for the hard words of the gospel; we are unable to hear the message of the cross. It is only in the second half of life that we come to understand that dying is not opposed to life. Dying is a part of a greater mystery—and we are a part of that mystery. In my experience, it is usually the older psyche that is ready to hear such sober truth.  

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A Teaching to Be Lived Out

Father Richard considers how challenging it is to live out Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount:  

I am told that the Sermon on the Mount—the essence of Jesus’ teaching—is the least quoted Scripture in official Catholic Church documents. We must be honest and admit that most of Christianity has focused very little on what Jesus himself taught and spent most of his time doing: healing people, doing acts of justice and inclusion, embodying compassionate and nonviolent ways of living.  

I’m grateful that my spiritual father, St. Francis of Assisi, took the Sermon on the Mount seriously and spent his life trying to imitate Jesus. Likewise, Francis’ followers, especially in the beginning, tried to imitate Francis. At its best, Franciscanism offers a simple return to the gospel as an alternative lifestyle more than an orthodox belief system. That example continues to be lived out by the Quakers, Amish, Mennonites, the Catholic Worker Movement, and others. For these groups, the Sermon on the Mount is not just words! At their best, they include the outsider, prefer the margins to the center, are committed to nonviolence, and choose social poverty and divine union over any private perfection or sense of moral superiority.  

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us this short but effective image so we will know that we are to act on his words and live the teachings, instead of only believing things about God:  

Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built a house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined (Matthew 7:24–27; Richard’s emphasis).   

Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, understood the Sermon on the Mount as the foundational plan for following Jesus: “Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers.” [1] She observed that “we are trying to lead a good life. We are trying to talk about and write about the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the social principles of the church, and it is most astounding, the things that happen when you start trying to live this way. To perform the works of mercy becomes a dangerous practice.” [2]  

Jesus taught an alternative wisdom that shakes the social order instead of upholding the conventional wisdom that maintains it. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.  

Fullness of Time

Friday, October 31, 2025

Richard Rohr honors the significance of “thin times” that draw us nearer to the threshold between this realm and the next:  

What some call “liminal space” or threshold space (in Latin, limen means a threshold) is a very good phrase for those special times, events, and places that open us up to the sacred. It seems we need special (sacred) days to open us up to all days being special and sacred. This has always been the case and didn’t originate with Christianity. Ancient initiation rites were intensely sacred time and space that sent the initiate into a newly discovered sacred universe. 

What became All Saints Day and All Souls Day (November 1–2) was already called “thin times” by the ancient Celts (as were February 1–2: St. Bridget’s Day and Candlemas Day, when candles were blessed and lit). The veil between this world and the next world was considered most “thin” and easily traversed during these times. On these days, we are invited to be aware of deep time—that is, past, present, and future time gathered into one especially holy moment. We are reminded that our ancestors are still in us and work with us and through us. We call it the “communion of saints.” The New Testament phrase for this is “when time came to a fullness,” as when Jesus first announces the reign of God (Mark 1:15) or when Mary comes to the moment of birth (Luke 2:6). We are in liminal space whenever past, present, and future time come together in a full moment of readiness. We are in liminal space whenever the division between “right here” and “over there” is obliterated in our consciousness. 

Deep time, along with the communion of saints professed in Christian creeds, means that our goodness is not just our own, nor is our badness just our own. We are intrinsically social animals. We carry the lived and the unlived (and unhealed) lives of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as far back as DNA and genomes can trace them—which is pretty far back. It does take a village to create a person. We are the very first generation to know that this is literally and genetically true. There is deep healing and understanding when we honor the full cycle of life. No wonder so many are intrigued today by genealogy searches and ancestry test kits.  

Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole) at the very same time. I hope this frees us from any unnecessary individual guilt—and, more importantly, frees us to be full “partners in God’s triumphant parade” through time and history (2 Corinthians 2:14). We are in on the deal and, yes, the really Big Deal. We are all a very small part of a very Big Thing!  

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John Chaffee 5 on Friday

1.

“I have renounced spirituality to find God.”

– Thomas Merton, Catholic Monk and Activist

Thomas Merton frequents these Friday newsletters, I know, I know.

You can’t deny it, though, this one is still just golden.  It is almost a Christian version of a Koan…

It is not that someone “gives up faith” to find God, it is more that God is larger than our concepts, frameworks, rites, and rituals.  God is willing to be experienced within them, but at some point, we butt up against the limitations of those things.

For me, there is a season in which it makes sense to “learn” religion, and then to “unlearn” it, to then “relearn” it in a larger, more mysterious sense.  (This might be similar to Brueggemann’s idea of “orientation, disorientation, reorientation”, which Rohr then calls “order, disorder, reorder.”)

It may be the wisdom of the Dark Night of the Soul that first formulated it, but there is a point at which we may need to “repent” of our own limiting understandings of God!

2.

“Individuation is the process of becoming a ‘person,’ a fully integrated and relational being… That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of one’s inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”

– Sr. Ilia Delio, Franciscan Theologian

This quote stopped me in my tracks.  This week I finished reading The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole.  It was not exactly an easy read, but it certainly connected some dots for me.

The possibility that all of our external conflict is the result of externalization of internal conflict is striking.  That which we cannot handle within ourselves, we seek to eliminate outside of ourselves.

Every division, every separation, every conflict, and every war is the result of an internal division, separation, conflict, or war we are dealing with.  This means that for there to be world peace that lasts, there must be the teaching of internal peace/shalom.

The book leans heavily into the idea of the Whole and how to be properly “catholic” means to be concerned (kata) with the whole (holos) of everything.

3.

“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

– 1 Corinthians 15:22

Not a few.

Not some.

Not most.

ALL.

4.

“I take my cue from Jesus Christ who told me and told all of us to love each other, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit those in prison. If you can’t do that, you’re not a believer—I don’t care what church you go to.”

– James Baldwin, Civil Right Activist

Any “Christianity” that does not lead toward loving one’s neighbor enough that one can’t help but do acts of compassionate justice while respecting the inherent dignity of the other… is not Christianity.

5.

“You’ve made a holy fool of me and I’ve thanked You ever since.”

– In a Sweater, Poorly Knit by mewithoutYou

I think that this singular line from mewithoutYou completely encapsulates my personal spirituality.

Connecting With Our Ancestors

Remembering All My Relations

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands. 
—Linda Hogan, Dwellings 

Chickasaw poet and author Linda Hogan describes how a sweat lodge ceremony draws together elements of the earth to accompany those inside:  

In a sweat lodge ceremony, the entire world is brought inside the enclosure. The soft odor of smoking cedar accompanies this arrival. It is all called in. The animals come from the warm and sunny distances…. Wind arrives from the four directions. It has moved through caves and breathed through our bodies…. The sky is there with all the stars whose lights we see long after the stars themselves have gone back to nothing. It is a place grown intense and holy. It is a place of immense community and of humbled solitude; we sit together in our aloneness and speak, one at a time, our deepest language of need, hope, loss, and survival. We remember that all things are connected.  

The ceremony seeks to repair any disconnections:  

Remembering this is the purpose of the ceremony. It is part of a healing and restoration. It is the mending of a broken connection between us and the rest. The participants in a ceremony say the words “All my relations” before and after we pray; those words create a relationship with other people, with animals, with the land. To have health it is necessary to keep all these relations in mind. The intention of a ceremony is to put a person back together by restructuring the human mind…. We make whole our broken-off pieces of self and world. Within ourselves, we bring together the fragments of our lives in a sacred act of renewal, and we reestablish our connections with others. The ceremony … takes us toward the place of balance, our place in the community of all things. It is an event that sets us back upright. But it is not a finished thing. The real ceremony begins where the formal one ends, when we take up a new way, our minds and hearts filled with the vision of earth that holds us within it, in compassionate relationship to and with our world.  

We speak. We sing. We swallow water and breathe smoke. By the end of the ceremony, it is as if skin contains land and birds. The places within us have become filled. As inside the enclosure of the lodge, the animals and ancestors move into the human body, into skin and blood. The land merges with us. The stones come to dwell inside the person. Gold rolling hills take up residence…. We who easily grow apart from the world are returned to the great store of life all around us, and there is the deepest sense of being at home here in this intimate kinship. There is no real aloneness. There is solitude and the nurturing silence that is relationship with ourselves, but even then we are part of something larger.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

To live in My Presence consistently, you must expose and expel your rebellious tendencies. When something interferes with your plans or desires, you tend to resent the interference. Try to become aware of each resentment, however petty it may seem. Don’t push those unpleasant feelings down; instead, let them come to the surface where you can deal with them. Ask My Spirit to increase your awareness of resentful feelings. Bring them boldly into the Light of My Presence, so that I can free you from them.
     The ultimate solution to rebellious tendencies is submission to My authority over you. Intellectually you rejoice in My sovereignty, without which the world would be a terrifying place. But when My sovereign will encroaches on your little domain of control, you often react with telltale resentment.
     The best response to losses or thwarted hopes is praise: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Remember that all good things–your possessions, your family and friends, your health and abilities, your time–are gifts from Me. Instead of feeling entitled to all these blessings, respond to them with gratitude. Be prepared to let go of anything I take from you, but never let go of My hand!

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:23-24: David asked God to search for sin and point it out, even to the level of testing his thoughts. This is exploratory surgery for sin. How are we to recognize sin unless God points it out? Then, when God shows us, we can repent and be forgiven. Make this verse your prayer. If you ask the Lord to search your heart and your thoughts to reveal your sin, you will be continuing on “the path of everlasting life.”

1st Peter 5:6 (NLT)
6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:6: We often worry about our position and status, hoping to get proper recognition for what we do. But Peter advises us to remember that God’s recognition counts more than human praise. God is able and willing to bless us according to his timing. Humbly obey God regardless of present circumstances, and in his good time – either in this life or the next – he will honor you.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:7: Carrying your worries, stresses, and daily struggles by yourself shows that you have not trusted God fully with your life. It takes humility, however, to recognize that God cares, to admit your need, and to let others in God’s family help you. Sometimes we think that struggles caused by our own sin and foolishness are not God’s concern. But when we turn to God in repentance, he will bear the weight even of those struggles. Letting God have your anxieties calls for action, not passivity. Don’t submit to circumstances but to the Lord, who controls circumstances.

Job 1:21 (NLT)
21 He said,
“I came naked from my mother’s womb,
    and I will be naked when I leave.
The Lord gave me what I had,
    and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!”

Additional insight regarding Job 1:21: Job did not hide his overwhelming grief. He had not lost his faith in God; instead, his emotions showed that he was human and that he loved his family. God created our emotions, and it is not sinful or inappropriate to express them as Job did. If you have experienced a deep loss, a disappointment, or a heartbreak, admit your feelings to yourself and others, and grieve.

Additional insight regarding Job 1:21: Job had lost his possessions and family in this first of Satan’s tests, but he reacted rightly toward God by acknowledging God’s sovereign authority over everything God had given him. Satan lost this first round. Job passed the test and proved that people can love God for who he is, not for what he gives.

A Veil of Light and Love

When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit. We cross over into knowing God, with God’s own knowledge of God, which is Christ. 
—James Finley, Turning to the Mystics, podcast    

James Finley leads us through a meditation to help us experience the immediate presence and intimacy of God’s love and those who have joined God before us: 

I invite you to imagine that you are sitting alone in the middle of a well-lit room. There are no windows and no furniture in the room other than the chair you are sitting in…. As you sit there alone in silence, the light in the room slowly begins to dim. As the room dims, a light on the other side of the wall you are facing slowly becomes brighter and brighter. You begin to realize that the wall you are facing is not really a solid wall, as you had imagined, but is rather a gossamer veil that is becoming increasingly translucent in the light that is shining through it, filling the darkness of your room with an unfamiliar light.  

In the light shining out from the other side of the veil you see God, the angels, and the saints. They are all laughing and waving at you, letting you know how delighted they are that you can see them. You start laughing and waving back at them.  

Then God, the angels, and the saints pass through the veil to join you, rendering the room radiant with communal joy and delight in which your very presence begins to glow with the presence of God. Illumined and transformed in this way, God and the angels and saints carry you with them into heaven, just on the other side of the veil, where all are dwelling who have died and crossed over into God. Then God and the angels and saints carry you with them back through the veil, back to the room, now aglow with heavenly wonder and delight. Then, once again, they transport you back into the celestial realm, and then back again into the room….  

You are left once again in the familiarity of your earthly experience of yourself sitting there alone in the room, facing the wall. But while everything is the same as before, everything is, in an interior way, radically different. For you now realize that while, yes, it is true that, on one level, the wall you are facing really is a wall, … yet in the afterglow of the unitive experience that has just graced your life, you now know in the depths of your awakened heart that, ultimately speaking, the wall is no wall at all…. You have been graced with a fleeting experience of being immersed in God-immersed-in-you in a boundless communion that utterly transcends, even as it utterly permeates, the darkness and fragmentations of this world.  

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Eight Lessons from Charlie Kirk’s Life

1. Put God First Charlie never shied away from declaring his faith. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Every decision we make must flow from that starting point. If we’re not putting Christ first, we’re building on sand.
2. Be Bold Charlie embodied Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.” He wasn’t timid, he wasn’t quiet, and he certainly wasn’t “safe.” He was bold. And that boldness shook the foundations of a society addicted to lies.
3. Go Into Hostile Territory Who else but Charlie would walk into the lion’s den of a liberal college campus and speak truth to young minds being discipled by secularism? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel” (Mark 16:15). That command doesn’t say “go only where you’re welcome.” We need more warriors willing to storm enemy ground with the banner of Christ.
4. Stand on Your Principles In a world where compromise is currency, Charlie stood tall. He knew who he was and Whose he was. Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). That’s the call: principles anchored in Scripture, not popularity.
5. Fight Back with Ideas, Not Weapons Charlie never raised a fist; he raised ideas. He armed himself with words, debates, logic, and truth. Paul wrote, “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). Let us wield ideas and the Word of God with just as much courage.
6. Challenge the Status Quo Charlie rattled cages. He asked hard questions. He dismantled long-held assumptions. And guess what? That’s what Christians are called to do. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). If your faith isn’t shaking up the world, you’re doing it wrong.
7. Be Devoted to Your Country and Family Charlie loved America. He loved his family. He saw both as gifts from God to be cherished and defended. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives… he has denied the faith” (1 Timothy 5:8). Let us emulate his devotion at home and in our nation.
8. Create Change Charlie was just 18 years old when he launched Turning Point USA out of his parents’ garage. From that humble beginning came a movement that impacted millions. “Who dares despise the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). What’s stopping you from creating something for Christ that will outlive you?